World's fair

World’s fair, large international exhibition of a wide variety of industrial, scientific, and cultural items that are on display at a specific site for a period of time, ranging usually from three to six months. World’s fairs include exhibits from a significant number of countries and often have an entertainment zone in which visitors can enjoy rides, exotic attractions, and food and beverages. Since the mid-19th century more than 100 world’s fairs have been held in more than 20 countries throughout the world. Generally speaking, these events are called world’s fairs in the United States, international (or universal) expositions in continental Europe and Asia, and exhibitions in Great Britain. The term expo has also been applied to many expositions in various locations.

World’s fairs are governed and regulated by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), a Paris-based organization established in 1928. Its objective is to bring order to exposition scheduling and to make clear the rights and responsibilities of the host city and participants. The original convention that established the BIE and set up guidelines for expositions has been revised a number of times, but as of the early 21st century a large exposition, termed a “registered exhibition,” could be held once every five years, and one smaller exposition, called a “recognized exhibition,” could be held during the interval.

Early national exhibitions

The English national fairs of the 18th century, which combined trade shows with carnival-like public entertainment, were among the forerunners of the modern world’s fair. In addition, the Society for the Arts (later called the Royal Society for the Arts and, subsequently, the RSA), established in London in 1754, produced a series of competitive art shows that included industrial arts—various technological innovations ranging from spinning wheels to cider presses.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the French began hosting industrial exhibitions. These came under the authority of the national government, whose aim was to assist French manufacturers in competing against the British in the international marketplace. The British, confident that their products were superior, never emulated this idea. Instead, the mechanics’ institutes in Great Britain began sponsoring exhibitions in the 1830s. These institutes were created to bring scientific education to craftsmen and factory workers, and their exhibitions displayed tools and other labour-saving mechanical devices that were based on the latest scientific inventions. The exhibitions of the mechanics’ institutes also featured entertainment and exotic displays, such as so-called “genuine historical relics” of sometimes dubious authenticity, as well as fine arts shows that mingled works by local and national artists.

The Great Exhibition and its legacy: the golden age of fairs

The era of the modern world’s fair began with Britain’sGreat Exhibition (formally, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations; often called the Crystal Palace Exhibition), held in London’s Hyde Park in 1851. It came about through the efforts of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert—who, because of his Continental background, had a special understanding of the potential value of an exhibition showcasing Britain to an international audience—and through Parliament’s adoption of free trade, which, it was hoped, would lead to more sales of British goods abroad. A royal commission chaired by Prince Albert planned the exhibition and held a competition for a building design. Ultimately, however, the commission rejected all the entries submitted and instead chose a design by Joseph Paxton, a greenhouse builder. Paxton’s iron-and-glass structure, dubbed the Crystal Palace, delighted the public and doubtless contributed to the success of the exhibition.

The transept of the Crystal Palace, designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Hyde Park, London.Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The exhibits on display at the Crystal Palace included scientific and technological marvels from many different countries as well as works of art and craftsmanship. Some six million people attended the exhibition, which earned a substantial profit. (A fund that was created with the profits still provides fellowships to British students in fields such as engineering and industrial design.)

The legacy of the Crystal Palace was immense. Its critical and financial success ensured that world’s fairs would continue to be held. The period between 1880 and World War I was a golden age of fairs, with more than 40 international expositions held in locations as varied as Australia (Melbourne, Victoria, 1888; and Hobart, Tasmania, 1894–95), Guatemala (Guatemala City, 1897), and Hanoi (1902–03; then located in French Indochina, now the capital of Vietnam).

In the United States, fairs were inspired by the experience of those who attended and participated in the early fairs in Europe. Although mechanics’ institutes existed in the United States in the 19th century, their occasional exhibitions do not appear to have had much influence on the planners of the earliest American international expositions. One of the very first of these followed in the footsteps of the Great Exhibition. The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, more commonly known as the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition, was held in 1853–54 in an iron-and-glass structure in Bryant Park. It showcased the same types of displays as its London counterpart but also included an especially impressive sculpture collection. Despite the fair’s promise, however, attendance never measured up to expectations, and it ended with a substantial monetary loss. It would be more than 20 years before another exposition was held in the United States.

Not to be outdone by London’s Crystal Palace, fair organizers in Paris held the first in a long series of international expositions in 1855. The exposition occupied a larger space and included exhibits from more countries than the Crystal Palace, and it presented several new features, such as reduced admission prices on Sundays and a separate fine arts pavilion that contained some 5,000 works by artists from 29 countries. Although it lost money, the 1855 Paris exposition left such a positive legacy that the government sponsored subsequent expositions in 1867, 1878, 1889, and 1900, each attracting a larger attendance than the previous one.

The Gallery of Machines at the 1889 Universal Exposition, Paris.Historical Picture Service, Chicago

By the 1870s the international exposition movement had become sufficiently well established that the planners of the centennial commemoration of America’sDeclaration of Independence concluded that a world’s fair would be the most appropriate type of celebration. Consequently, the U.S. Centennial Exhibition was held in Philadelphia in 1876. Its critical success and attendance of just under 10 million were enough to offset a large financial loss, and it inspired a rush of world’s fairs in the United States, especially in the South, over the next 40 years.

The Horticultural Hall at the U.S. Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876.Photo courtesy of John E. Findling

The Philadelphia centennial exhibition was particularly noteworthy in showing off the products of the early Industrial Revolution in America. Fairgoers were amazed by the 700-ton Corliss engine, the largest steam engine ever built, and by new inventions such as the telephone, the typewriter, and the mechanical calculator. In addition, the exposition hosted the first international art exhibition in the United States and was the first to spread exhibits out over several large, topically designated pavilions, a practice that soon became standard. Some 24 states erected their own pavilions as well, an idea repeated at many later fairs.

The Corliss steam engine generated all the energy used in Machinery Hall at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Although there were many important expositions in the last decades of the 19th century, the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 was arguably the most significant world’s fair in U.S. history and one of the most important in the history of world expositions. Coming soon after the spectacular 1889 exposition in Paris, where the Eiffel Tower was the main attraction, the World’s Columbian Exposition, in the minds of its organizers, had to be bigger and more important than its Parisian predecessor. Chicago’s managers never found a signature structure to surpass the Eiffel Tower (although the Ferris wheel did make its debut at the Chicago fair), but they did create an exposition whose architecture shaped the country’s style for the next 25 years and whose exhibits were more impressive than anything seen before. Moreover, the exposition introduced the concept of the midway, a lively entertainment zone, a feature that soon became a staple of virtually all future expositions.

The World’s Columbian Exposition marked the peak of the golden age of fairs. It was more spectacular than anything that had preceded it, and, with the possible exception of the great Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1900), no later exposition matched its splendour or its influence. Still, a major international exposition was held almost annually somewhere in the world between 1893 and 1916, when World War I brought a temporary end to the movement. Some, like St. Louis (1904) and San Francisco (1915), were large and showy. Others, like the Jamestown Exhibition—held in Norfolk, Virginia (1907), for the 300th anniversary of the Jamestown Colony—were smaller and marked important historical anniversaries. Still others, like London’s Franco-British Exhibition (1908), signified bilateral friendship. In addition, some smaller countries hosted expositions to mark their emergence onto the international scene, such as the Belgian expositions in Liège (1905) and Brussels (1910).

Postcard image of an international naval display, part of the Jamestown Exhibition held in Norfolk, Virginia, 1907.Photo courtesy of John E. Findling

The world’s fairs held in the United States during this golden era tended to have characteristic differences from those held in Europe. U.S. participation in European fairs was privately managed. The absence of government involvement carried over to the organization of expositions in the United States, where federal aid was confined to U.S. government pavilions and exhibits. European fairs were, to a far larger extent, government enterprises. Another difference was that American fairs much more readily included entertainment venues in the form of rides, exotic attractions, and, by the 1890s, so-called foreign or native “villages” that showed fairgoers the way of life of groups from Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific islands, who were generally presented as belonging to, in the parlance of the time, “primitive” societies. By the first decade of the 20th century, fairs in Europe also had adopted these types of entertainment attractions.

Postcard image of the U.S. Government Building, Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, Omaha, Nebraska, 1898.Photo courtesy of John E. Findling

Modernism and Cold War rivalries

After World War I, fairs never regained the cultural status they had enjoyed before the war. Fewer were held, and many of them were not artistically or commercially successful. With improved transportation and communication networks, fairs had less to offer people who could now see movies or hear radio programs about foreign lands or even travel relatively easily to visit them firsthand. Nonetheless, there were expositions worthy of note during this time. The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925, made the architectural and design style known as Art Deco highly popular for the next 15 years. The British Empire Exhibition in Wembley (1924–25), the Exposition Coloniale Internationale in Paris (1931), and the Exposition Universelle et Internationale in Brussels (1935) showcased the overseas empires of these three countries at a time when rumblings of independence were just beginning to be heard from their colonies.

Mayor of New York City Fiorello H. La Guardia (seated behind the driver) attending the 1939–40 New York World's Fair.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Postcard image of the Travel Building at the Century of Progress Exposition, Chicago, 1933–34.Courtesy of John E. Findling

Two American expositions of the 1930s deserve special mention. The Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago (1933–34) and the New York World’s Fair (1939–40) were both exciting examples of Art Deco architecture and fairs designed to take fairgoers’ minds off the Great Depression by suggesting the wonderful future that awaited them once the hard times were over. While the hopefulness of the New York World’s Fair was cut short by the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the iconic Trylon and Perisphere structures from that fair remain fixtures in popular culture that are associated with happier times.

The Trylon and Perisphere sculptures at the New York World's Fair, Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, 1939–40.Photo courtesy of John E. Findling

As the Cold War grew out of the devastation of World War II in Europe and the Pacific, world’s fairs became staging grounds for displays of U.S.-Soviet rivalry. At the expositions in Brussels (1958) and Montreal (1967), the main focus of attention was on the comparison between the pavilions of the rival countries, and critics and politicians analyzed them endlessly. Although the Soviet Union did not participate in the 1962 Century 21 Exposition in Seattle, that exposition’s emphasis on science and space exploration had overtones of Cold War competition.

The West German pavilion, designed by Frei Otto, at the Expo 67 world's fair, Montreal.Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The largest exposition of this era was the New York World’s Fair of 1964–65, which adopted “Peace through understanding” as its theme. While one might have expected there to be a strong Cold War atmosphere at that fair, this was not the case. The BIE had refused to sanction the fair because of the organizers’ refusal to follow its guidelines. Thus, official foreign participation was limited to newly independent Asian and African countries, while other countries were represented by private commercial interests.

The Unisphere, the signature structure of the New York World's Fair, Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, 1964–65.Photo courtesy of John E. Findling

By 1970, the year of the Japan World Exposition at Ōsaka, some of the tension of the Cold War had moderated. Both the United States and the Soviet Union touted their space programs in their pavilions, but the real focus of the exposition was on the host country and its remarkable recovery just 25 years after the end of World War II. The exposition, which attracted a then-record number of visitors—more than 60 million—was clear evidence that Japan had regained its place among the world’s leading nations.

Later years

Fairs since 1970 have tended to enlighten visitors about a particular theme, often environmental in nature, rather than celebrate a historical anniversary or a colonial empire. Many were smaller fairs held in smaller cities: Spokane, Washington, U.S. (1974), with a general environmental theme; Okinawa, Japan (1975–76), on the oceans; Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S. (1982), on international energy issues; New Orleans (1984), on rivers; Tsukuba, Japan (1985), on housing; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (1986), on transportation and communications (and also in celebration of the city’s centennial); Brisbane, Queensland, Australia (1988), on leisure; Taejŏn (Daejeon), South Korea (1993), on sustainable development; and Lisbon (1998), also on oceans. There were few departures from the issue-oriented theme. The expositions of 1992 in Genoa, Italy, and Seville, Spain, commemorated the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to America. The fair in Hannover, Germany, in 2000 marked the end of the 20th century, but a set of ideas known as the Hannover Principles, first promulgated in 1992 by the architectural firm of William McDonough in preparation for the exposition, argued that future expositions should focus on the realistic presentation of contemporary social and environmental problems and their possible solutions.

The United States Pavilion at Expo '74, Spokane, Washington.Photo by Walter Hodges, courtesy of John E. Findling

While fairs became less frequent in the 21st century because of the increasing costs of staging them and because the BIE was imposing tighter regulations, there were two significant events in the first decade of the century. In Japan, Aichi prefecture hosted an exposition near the city of Nagoya in 2005, and five years later Shanghai produced China’s first major exposition. The Aichi fair, which billed itself as a “green exposition,” concentrated on preserving natural areas in and around its site and in reusing or recycling as many of its structural elements as possible. Expo Shanghai 2010, held in one of the world’s largest cities, quite naturally chose the theme “Better city, better life” and, with a reported 73 million visitors, easily broke Ōsaka’s attendance record. Subsequent expositions—in 2012 (Yŏsu, South Korea), on the importance of the world’s oceans and coastlines; in 2015 (Milan), on food and resource consumption; and in 2017 (Astana, Kazakhstan), on the future of energy—were all relative successes but came nowhere near the attendance numbers of Expo Shanghai.

Although some critics have denounced world’s fairs as extravagant and irrelevant in the world of the early 21st century, others have asserted that, by moving away from the old theme of “technological utopianism” and toward a focus on social and environmental issues as suggested by the Hannover Principles, fairs can continue to be worthwhile for visitors as well as for host cities and countries.

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